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AARO posted:The Hilbert Hotel argument is used to demonstrate the absurdity of an actual infinite. As I said before, that doesn't show anything contradictory. It shows infinity is weird. But hey, the world is weird and what's wrong with that. What Gauss has to say here isn't terribly relevant. Today we are much more comfortable describing things as infinite. Your argument is also irrelevant to the post you're responding to, which didn't object to beginning but objected to beginning impying a cause.
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# ? May 24, 2016 22:29 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 23:44 |
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Zaradis posted:But to find meaning requires knowledge, neither of which can (in my opinion) be satisfactorily discovered. Yet, we want both meaning and knowledge. So we pretend that we have both. We don't have them by your standards. Not everyone uses your standards, thus they can have both as far as they are concerned, and so there will be no cognitive dissonance. Edit: I don't agree that meaning requires knowledge. Meaning is imposed, it's not innate. AARO posted:The Hilbert Hotel argument is used to demonstrate the absurdity of an actual infinite. Infinite is a concept, not a concrete thing. So yes, when you misuse the term infinite then things don't really make any sense. But even granting that, none of this helps make the case that the universe was "caused" at all, much less by the Christian God specifically. Your example has nothing to do with the question that was asked. Who What Now fucked around with this message at 22:43 on May 24, 2016 |
# ? May 24, 2016 22:41 |
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Who What Now posted:I don't agree that meaning requires knowledge. Meaning is imposed, it's not innate. I agree, but that it is imposed means that it is subjective and that it is subjective means any claims that others also ought to find meaning in the things you do are no better than saying "People should like what I like because I like what I like."
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# ? May 24, 2016 22:46 |
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I just wanted to point out that this argument still hasn't been answered, or engaged with in any way:Juffo-Wup posted:Here is Craig's argument (Call it argument A) that the cause of the universe must be a person: The OP thought that I misrepresented Craig's argument, but then quoted this paraphrase of the argument from Craig that I was responding to: AARO posted:+ This first cause must also be personal because there are only two accepted types of In short, the argument that Craig deploys to show that the cause of the universe must be personal rather than scientific generalizes against personal causes too, which entails a contradiction. Arguments that entail contradictions are generally thought to be bad arguments.
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# ? May 24, 2016 22:47 |
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Zaradis posted:I agree, but that it is imposed means that it is subjective and that it is subjective means any claims that others also ought to find meaning in the things you do are no better than saying "People should like what I like because I like what I like." Only if every single person is a hyper-logical nihilistic solipsist. But, thankfully, they aren't, people care about and value subjective opinions and claims. And there's nothing wrong with doing so that would cause anybody any sense of cognitive dissonance, there are not necessarily any contradictory positions being held.
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# ? May 24, 2016 22:53 |
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The Belgian posted:As I said before, that doesn't show anything contradictory. It shows infinity is weird. But hey, the world is weird and what's wrong with that. What Gauss has to say here isn't terribly relevant. Today we are much more comfortable describing things as infinite. Your argument is also irrelevant to the post you're responding to, which didn't object to beginning but objected to beginning impying a cause. Yeah I'm not sure why this example shows something contradictory or absurd in the concept of infinity that makes it impossible to apply to the real world. I mean, the same could be said of the concept of zero. I have zero dollars and I divide it up among myself and five of my friends. Normally dividing things would reduce the scalar value of a number, so are the zero dollars I have now less than the zero dollars I had before? Math says no, fuzzy reasoning says yes. Why should I choose the latter over the former? Why should I be dumbfounded and see a contradiction or absurdity here?
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# ? May 24, 2016 22:55 |
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What exactly does Craig mean when he says "personal" cause?
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# ? May 24, 2016 23:00 |
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Who What Now posted:What exactly does Craig mean when he says "personal" cause? That the cause is a thing with a mind, i.e., a person.
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# ? May 24, 2016 23:01 |
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Logical positivists are pedants. That's broadly my view.AARO posted:I know there are many non-theists who hold deep ethical and moral beliefs. I'm wondering how you respond to the positivists. Where is the verifiability for your moral and ethical claims? You can't prove with science that it's "wrong" to do anything can you? So why do you believe it? While I cannot conclusively prove that things are wrong or right, I can certainly get a fairly strong suggestion from observation and reasoning. Stealing things in the majority of cases is bad, because it deprives people of things they value and may indeed need in order to live properly, it also violates people's sense of security which is an important facet of their mental wellbeing. Stealing carries a signifiant potential for harming people, so as an extension of not harming people you should also not steal from people. You can make some pretty sound and practical ethical judgements without worrying about them being objectively correct. I suppose my most pressing response to "how do you make do with moral relativism" would be "why do you feel the need for moral absolutism?"
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# ? May 24, 2016 23:08 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:That the cause is a thing with a mind, i.e., a person. That seems ill-defined. Does it have to be caused by the mind alone? If I pour vinegar into baking soda is the resulting reaction personal or scientific? What if I leave a container of vinegar out and a gust of wind knocks it over into a pile of baking soda? What if that wind was caused by a fan I turned on? What if the wind was caused man-made global warming? Basically, how many degrees of separation does it take before a cause is no longer personal?
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# ? May 24, 2016 23:13 |
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Who What Now posted:That seems ill-defined. Does it have to be caused by the mind alone? If I pour vinegar into baking soda is the resulting reaction personal or scientific? What if I leave a container of vinegar out and a gust of wind knocks it over into a pile of baking soda? What if that wind was caused by a fan I turned on? What if the wind was caused man-made global warming? I'm not totally sure, but here's an attempt: assuming you believe in robust ('libertarian') free will, then an agent's willing is something that was undetermined by the normal physical functioning of the universe. So, for any event, you can ask 'would this have happened if there weren't any agents?' Then you can play around with degrees of separation, either settling on some threshold point, or else imagining that the extent to which an event had a personal cause is itself a matter of degree. I dunno. I don't buy free will, so obviously the argument isn't convincing to me, but you gotta try to meet your opponent halfway sometimes.
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# ? May 24, 2016 23:20 |
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Who What Now posted:Only if every single person is a hyper-logical nihilistic solipsist. But, thankfully, they aren't, people care about and value subjective opinions and claims. And there's nothing wrong with doing so that would cause anybody any sense of cognitive dissonance, there are not necessarily any contradictory positions being held. I'd say that clinical psychopaths only value their own subjective opinions and claims. So they put no value in the subjective opinions or claims of others. If another person claims that the psychopath ought to value others opinions then there is simply a disagreement, since both claimants' opinions are grounded in subjectivity, and neither is grounded on any stronger ground than the other. And the important point for your argument is that, according to you, for the psychopath to be wrong just requires more subjective opinions in agreement against his own. So if there are 100 psychopaths and 1000 utilitarians, then, following your argument, utilitarianism is correct. You're advocating a tyranny of the moral majority, which I doubt many would agree with, I certainly do not. The cognitive dissonance still clearly comes into play in even your scenario. The idea that a majority opinion regarding morality is the correct moral opinion is merely a confirmation bias of those who hold the same moral opinion as those in the majority.
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# ? May 24, 2016 23:43 |
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Just a quick question: on your view, is it possible for me to 'schmow' that there are objective moral facts, and what at least some of them are, where 'schmowledge' is what I have about propositions like 'Frank Sinatra was a singer' and 'oxygen is responsible for combustion, rather than phlogiston'? Or do I schmow the latter things, but not the former?
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# ? May 24, 2016 23:54 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:Just a quick question: on your view, is it possible for me to 'schmow' that there are objective moral facts, and what at least some of them are, where 'schmowledge' is what I have about propositions like 'Frank Sinatra was a singer' and 'oxygen is responsible for combustion, rather than phlogiston'? Or do I schmow the latter things, but not the former? I grant that we know things on the philosophical definition of knowledge. But we cannot be sure about the truth of the things that we claim to know. It simply isn't a possibility given the way in which human beings experience...don't get me started again, I got more invested last time than I justifiably had time for
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# ? May 25, 2016 00:04 |
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Zaradis posted:I grant that we know things on the philosophical definition of knowledge. But we cannot be sure about the truth of the things that we claim to know. It simply isn't a possibility given the way in which human beings experience...don't get me started again, I got more invested last time than I justifiably had time for Sorry! I schmow I can be too persistent sometimes.
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# ? May 25, 2016 00:11 |
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Zaradis posted:I'd say that clinical psychopaths only value their own subjective opinions and claims. So they put no value in the subjective opinions or claims of others. If another person claims that the psychopath ought to value others opinions then there is simply a disagreement, since both claimants' opinions are grounded in subjectivity, and neither is grounded on any stronger ground than the other. And the important point for your argument is that, according to you, for the psychopath to be wrong just requires more subjective opinions in agreement against his own. Woooooooooooooah there, where did I say this, again?
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# ? May 25, 2016 00:45 |
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Who What Now posted:Woooooooooooooah there, where did I say this, again? It seemed to me that what you were saying is that because most people care about and value subjective opinions and claims then that makes subjective opinions and claims valuable; but that would be a vicious circle. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that you meant that because most people generally agree about which subjective opinions and values are valuable that this somehow grants some moral power for those subjective opinions to condemn or reward opinions that agree or disagree with them. Regardless of what you mean, the point that people care about and value subjective opinions and claims says nothing of the moral authority of those opinions and claims. I see no reason why the fact that an individual, a nation, or every being in the universe value certain opinions and claims would give those opinions and claims moral authority over anyone in disagreement.
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# ? May 25, 2016 01:01 |
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Subjective claims and opinions are valuable because of their logical underpinning, their popularity does not diminish or increase their validity.
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# ? May 25, 2016 01:08 |
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I mean if you subjectively valued popularity, then they would. Which people kind of do, a bit, which is why conformity is a thing?
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# ? May 25, 2016 01:12 |
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Zaradis posted:It seemed to me that what you were saying is that because most people care about and value subjective opinions and claims then that makes subjective opinions and claims valuable; but that would be a vicious circle. No, I already told you that value is something that we as individuals impose upon things, it's not innate and our impositions of value are our own. quote:I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that you meant that because most people generally agree about which subjective opinions and values are valuable that this somehow grants some moral power for those subjective opinions to condemn or reward opinions that agree or disagree with them. I find it funny that you say you "gave me the benefit of the doubt" by taking the worst possible view of what I said and then making completely baseless assumptions about what I meant. I'll reiterate my point more clearly for you: you're wrong when you say that "a meaningful, satisfying, worthwhile human experience requires some level of cognitive dissonance in our day to day, moment to moment experience." You're perhaps projecting your own unease created by your positions, but there is nothing that necessitates other people using their own standards of "knowledge" and "meaning" be equally at odds such that they experience cognitive dissonance. quote:Regardless of what you mean, the point that people care about and value subjective opinions and claims says nothing of the moral authority of those opinions and claims. I see no reason why the fact that an individual, a nation, or every being in the universe value certain opinions and claims would give those opinions and claims moral authority over anyone in disagreement. By this do you mean that I cannot morally judge the actions of others, to condemn or condone them? Because that's just flat out wrong too, I can and nobody can stop me. Or do you mean that there is no "moral authority" to, say, physically bar someone from what I believe to be an immoral action (such as stealing)?
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# ? May 25, 2016 01:14 |
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The Belgian posted:Your argument is also irrelevant to the post you're responding to, which didn't object to beginning but objected to beginning impying a cause. It does seem to be self evident that all things which begin have a cause. Can you name one thing that began that did not have a cause?
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# ? May 25, 2016 03:33 |
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AARO posted:It does seem to be self evident that all things which begin have a cause. Can you name one thing that began that did not have a cause? Presumably, everything. There is no rule that says the universe can't be infinitely cyclical. Also even if the universe did have a cause there is no reason why it has to be personified. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:41 on May 25, 2016 |
# ? May 25, 2016 03:38 |
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AARO posted:It does seem to be self evident that all things which begin have a cause. Can you name one thing that began that did not have a cause? No, you can't shift the burden of proof like that. If you're going to say that the Christian God caused the universe you have to support that. Even if no such examples exist that doesn't make your assertion the least bit more credible.
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# ? May 25, 2016 03:38 |
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AARO posted:It does seem to be self evident that all things which begin have a cause. Can you name one thing that began that did not have a cause? The universe
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# ? May 25, 2016 04:53 |
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OwlFancier posted:Presumably, everything. There is no rule that says the universe can't be infinitely cyclical. Yeah, except for of course if you read the argument.
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# ? May 25, 2016 05:46 |
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AARO posted:Yeah, except for of course if you read the argument. There have been multiple responses pointing out huge glaring holes in the argument that you've completely ignored.
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# ? May 25, 2016 05:48 |
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Also, doesn't the verb "cause" necessitate temporality? Like "first cause, then effect" is incoherent without the concept of time.
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# ? May 25, 2016 07:58 |
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AARO posted:It does seem to be self evident that all things which begin have a cause. Can you name one thing that began that did not have a cause? The natural numbers begin with 0, but there is no cause there. By the way, I do not believe the universe has a beginning, but I'm willing to investigate the concept. The Belgian fucked around with this message at 10:38 on May 25, 2016 |
# ? May 25, 2016 10:06 |
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AARO posted:It does seem to be self evident that all things which begin have a cause. Can you name one thing that began that did not have a cause? I'm just gonna have to repeat myself here: And what exactly does (Craig) mean by "begin to exist"? If I made a sandwich from its constituent materials does this mean the sandwich "began to exist" at that point? If so, how exactly does KCA differ fromt he traditional FCA and all its flaws? Or does "begin to exist" mean "begin to exist ex nihlo?" DID the universe truly begin ex nihlo? And even if so, how can Craig make the generalization that "everything that begins to exist has a cause" based on this one instance? Honestly, the KCA is grossly unconvincing to me on an elementary level. It's only an improvement on the traditional FCA in that it has a couple more hoops to jump through in breaking it down.
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# ? May 25, 2016 11:33 |
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Who What Now posted:By this do you mean that I cannot morally judge the actions of others, to condemn or condone them? Because that's just flat out wrong too, I can and nobody can stop me. Correct, I never claimed otherwise. What I said was that your condemnations and condoning have no moral authority over those being judged other than in your own mind. If I am stealing from you and you condemn me for it, so what? That's just you trying to impose your subjective morality onto me. It is no better or worse, no more right or wrong, than my imposing of my subjective morality that it is good for me to steal from you. To try to enforce that condemnation physically is no different in a moral sense than my act of stealing from you. If you want to condemn me within your own moral realm (i.e. your mind), then you certainly can. But this wholly defeats the purpose of morality, which is to reward and punish people for their actions in one way or another.
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# ? May 25, 2016 15:11 |
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AARO posted:Yeah, except for of course if you read the argument. The argument amounts to asserting that you find the concept of infinity absurd. Which, well, doesn't really matter? The universe does not have to be comprehensible or elegant. If it can be created by an unfathomable, infinitely powerful, uncaused Creator then why can't it just be immanently infinite, unfathomable, and uncaused?
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# ? May 25, 2016 15:22 |
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On the Zaradis/Juffo-wup nature-of-knowledge tangent: I think you're both putting a bit too much emphasis on certainty. People say they "know something is true" when they think that it's very likely. (Yes, this includes things like mathematics) As Zaradis will surely point out, this does nothing to save us from the problems of our systems not being able to justify themselves*, but it at least pushes it up to a slightly more abstract place. Secondly, the distinction between "subjective experience" and "knowledge of an outside world" seems to require a universe that factorises neatly into "you" and "not you". (*Indeed, nothing ever can, including the OP's pseudoplatonism. However, I think going from there to "morality is essentially arbitrary" is both unnecessary and discards some interesting structure)
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# ? May 25, 2016 17:01 |
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Dzhay posted:On the Zaradis/Juffo-wup nature-of-knowledge tangent: I think you're both putting a bit too much emphasis on certainty. People say they "know something is true" when they think that it's very likely. (Yes, this includes things like mathematics) Reasonable post. I do not disagree. Five stars.
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# ? May 25, 2016 17:04 |
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Dzhay posted:On the Zaradis/Juffo-wup nature-of-knowledge tangent: I think you're both putting a bit too much emphasis on certainty. People say they "know something is true" when they think that it's very likely. (Yes, this includes things like mathematics) The only sense in which I've been putting emphasis on certainty (whatever that is) is that I've been trying to give a deflationary account of its epistemic importance. Your point about what people mean when they say they 'know' something is more important than you let on; my interest in epistemology has always been to study knowledge as a natural phenomenon. You start from the observation that people often use the word 'know,' then you try to find out if there is anything in common between all or most of those cases, and then you use that data to build a general theory about the referent of that word. This is the same method you'd use to discover, for example, that 'jade' has a disjunctive referent, or that oxygen is implicated in combustion; you look at all the phenomena that people refer to with the word 'combustion,' and then you ask what is in common between those cases. That the answer is 'Oxygen' is an empirical matter, just as what counts as knowledge and why is an empirical question. I'm just not interested in inventing armchair definitions of natural-language words as part of demonstrating that those words have no referent - the project itself seems unmotivated. For more on this theme, see Quine's Epistemology Naturalized and The Nature of Natural Knowledge. Other important works on the theme of knowledge and skepticism that I haven't already mentioned are Moore's Proof of an External World (which a lot of people think is nonsense but they're mistaken, it's brilliant), Keith DeRose's Solving the Skeptical Problem, and Ernest Sosa's 2007 book on virtue epistemology. As to factorizing the universe into 'you' and 'not you,' I don't think anything I've said requires a particularly neat distinction: just two clear cases will do. If there are edge cases, then either 1.) there is a metaphysical fact of the matter to which we do not have epistemic access, 2.) edge cases are metaphysically indeterminate, or 3.) everything lies on a spectrum between 'you' and 'not you.' I don't think any of these is an obvious threat to anything I've endorsed. An aside: why think that systems can't justify themselves? Here's a proposition that is a (silly) definition of justification: 'S is justified in believing P just in case P does not entail a contradiction.' Since that proposition doesn't entail a contradiction,* I'm justified in believing it, according to the definition of justification just given. Self-reference isn't always vicious! In fact, it rarely is, which is why Russell's paradox was an important discovery rather than just some obvious thing. (*: If you think it does, you're not paying attention to scope. The proposition in question certainly entails, in many cases, both 'S is justified in believing P' and 'S is justified in believing ~P', but this is not a formal contradiction, nor is it even a Moorean paradox.)
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# ? May 25, 2016 18:05 |
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Zaradis posted:Correct, I never claimed otherwise. What I said was that your condemnations and condoning have no moral authority over those being judged other than in your own mind. If I am stealing from you and you condemn me for it, so what? That's just you trying to impose your subjective morality onto me. It is no better or worse, no more right or wrong, than my imposing of my subjective morality that it is good for me to steal from you. To try to enforce that condemnation physically is no different in a moral sense than my act of stealing from you. If you want to condemn me within your own moral realm (i.e. your mind), then you certainly can. But this wholly defeats the purpose of morality, which is to reward and punish people for their actions in one way or another. Before I address this more in depth, are you also saying that morality's only purpose is to reward or to punish? And do you believe that only morality can be or should be the basis of rewarding or punishing actions? And are you ever going to address my original point that cognitive dissonance is required in our day to day, moment to moment lives?
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# ? May 25, 2016 18:14 |
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Who What Now posted:Before I address this more in depth, are you also saying that morality's only purpose is to reward or to punish? And do you believe that only morality can be or should be the basis of rewarding or punishing actions? The point of morality is to have some ground from which one can claim that themselves and others ought to commit or not commit certain types of actions and to determine which of those actions deserve praise and which deserve condemnation. If morality is subjectively imposed on the world, a premise with which I do not disagree, then there is no such ground. That the morality you impose might conflict with mine is simply a fact of the matter. If there is no higher level of morality by which to judge which one of our subjective moralities is right or wrong then it's merely your word against mine. It's opinion versus opinion. Unless you want to claim that certain subjective moral beliefs have more moral worth than others then you have no basis from which to claim that others ought to act a certain moral way or to give praise or condemnation of moral action. And if you do want to claim that then you would have to make an argument that I cannot imagine without reference to a non-subjective morality. Therefore, if morality is subjectively imposed on the world, then to make moral claims necessitates that the person making the claim either actively deny, actively ignore, or be cognitively dissonant about the subjective origin of morality. Zaradis fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 25, 2016 |
# ? May 25, 2016 18:40 |
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Zaradis posted:The point of morality is to have some ground from which one can claim that themselves and others ought to commit or not commit certain types of actions and to determine which of those actions deserve praise and which deserve condemnation. Thus, moral disputes are far more likely to be starting from similar premises than completely alien ones, in which case you can certainly argue that one set of actions better adheres to the goals and premises shared by both parties. The idea that morality is inevitably restricted to shouting conflicting opinions into a void with no possibility of meaningful debate doesn't really reflect reality.
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# ? May 25, 2016 18:46 |
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Zaradis posted:The point of morality is to have some ground from which one can claim that themselves and others ought to commit or not commit certain types of actions and to determine which of those actions deserve praise and which deserve condemnation. Could you please, for once, answer the question I actually asked?
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# ? May 25, 2016 18:49 |
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OwlFancier posted:You can certainly reject all the fundamental premises and goals of my concept of morality but being as we are both humans living on earth I would suggest that it is likely that we both aspire to things like maximising human wellbeing. I did not and would not disagree. This is a philosophical discussion, not a sociological one. OwlFancier posted:Thus, moral disputes are far more likely to be starting from similar premises than completely alien ones, in which case you can certainly argue that one set of actions better adheres to the goals and premises shared by both parties. Agreed. But, again, this is a philosophical discussion, not a sociological one. Let's not pretend that many subjective moralities in agreement have any more logical ground from which to make their moral claims than a single subjective morality. OwlFancier posted:The idea that morality is inevitably restricted to shouting conflicting opinions into a void with no possibility of meaningful debate doesn't really reflect reality. I never suggested that it did.
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# ? May 25, 2016 18:53 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 23:44 |
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OwlFancier posted:You can certainly reject all the fundamental premises and goals of my concept of morality but being as we are both humans living on earth I would suggest that it is likely that we both aspire to things like maximising human wellbeing. Zaradis posted:I'd say that clinical psychopaths only value their own subjective opinions and claims. So they put no value in the subjective opinions or claims of others. If another person claims that the psychopath ought to value others opinions then there is simply a disagreement, since both claimants' opinions are grounded in subjectivity, and neither is grounded on any stronger ground than the other. And the important point for your argument is that, according to you, for the psychopath to be wrong just requires more subjective opinions in agreement against his own. So if there are 100 psychopaths and 1000 utilitarians, then, following your argument, utilitarianism is correct. You're advocating a tyranny of the moral majority, which I doubt many would agree with, I certainly do not.
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# ? May 25, 2016 18:54 |